It’s Always Cheney, Isn’t It?

U.S. Troops being used on American soil? The former Vice President has you covered, never mind the Posse Comitatus act and all that messy precedent and stuff:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration in 2002 considered sending U.S. troops into a Buffalo, N.Y., suburb to arrest a group of terror suspects in what would have been a nearly unprecedented use of military power within the United States, The New York Times reported.

Vice President Dick Cheney and several other Bush advisers at the time strongly urged that the military be used to apprehend men who were suspected of plotting with al-Qaida, who later became known as the Lackawanna Six, The Times reported on its Web site Friday night. It cited former administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

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27 comments

What do we have all those bases and soldiers around the country for, then? You can’t think that we’ve put military bases in NY and Maryland and Kansas and Georgia and Colorado for border defense, do you?

Let’s not forget the leftovers from the Indian Wars–Fort Riley, Fort Leavenworth, Fort Huachuca, Fort Bliss, Fort Sam Houston–and besides spreading the wealth, the simple pleasure of irony had to have been involved in the naming of some posts. Why in the world would ANYBODY name ANYTHING after duds like Braxton Bragg, Leonidas Polk, or George B. McClellan?

Maybe military officials are creating a hierarchy and attempting to make recruits feel insecure, thereby reinforcing their desire to stay on the bases in order to prove themselves. Too much Freudian psychoanalysis.

I’ve actually found it pretty hard to teach Watergate over the past five years or so, because it just doesn’t seem like that big a deal to the students — they’re already apathetic about things that are much worse.

Be nice to Bishop/General Polk; that first name wasn’t his fault. In my family he’s a bit of a sainted figure, since he stayed at our farm near Marietta the night before he went out and “got hisself kilt.”

My students here (undisclosed secure MidSoutherly location)embrace (hell, wallow in) the pathos-bordering-on-bathos of this minor vignette, yet see Watergate, Iran Contra and the post-2000 Rise of The Kleptocracy as No Big Deal. Grr!

The first round came close and a second even closer, causing the men to disperse. The third shell struck Polk’s left arm, went through the chest, and exited hitting his right arm then exploded against a tree; it nearly cut Polk in two.

“Although not present on the battlefield himself, Polk was wounded nearby on November 11 when the largest cannon in his army, nicknamed “Lady Polk” in honor of his wife, exploded during demonstration firing. The explosion stunned Polk and blew his clothes off, requiring a convalescence of several weeks.”